Prophetic Hermeneutics

By George E. Meisinger

George Meisinger is the president of Chafer Theological Seminary and professor in the Theology, Old and New Testament departments. He earned a B.A. from Biola University, a Th.M. in Old Testament Literature and Exegesis from Dallas Theological Seminary, a D.Min. in Biblical Studies from Western Seminary and has pursued Ph.D. studies in Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological Seminary. He also pastors Grace Chapel in Orange, California. His e-mail address is gmeisinger@socal.rr.com.

Introduction

Why is it that covenant theology and dispensationalism, two schools of theological thought embracing a high view of inspiration and claiming to employ a historical-grammatical hermeneutic, are miles apart in eschatology? It is apparent that something operates under the hermeneutical landscape to create this eschatological chasm. Two sources bring this gap into focus: Vern Poythress’ booklet titled Understanding Dispensationalists [1] and Charles Clough’s journal article titled “A Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison of Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.” [2]

The definitions of literal interpretation and fulfillment are key to grasping the hermeneutical gap between covenant and dispensational eschatologies. Poythress meets both definitions head on. He sees a proper definition of these terms as crucial to one’s management of the biblical notion of covenant and prophetic fulfillment. Clough likewise views these as important issues and shows by means of informal symbolic logic [3] why dispensationalists and covenant theologians make the choices they make when employing the historical-grammatical (often called “literal”) hermeneutic. Clough’s penetrating article reveals why a literal hermeneutic to one school does not mean the same thing to the other.

The issue of literal interpretation

Poythress points out that dispensationalists of all stripes “have in common. .. a particular view of the parallel-but-separate roles and destinies of Israel and the church,” and then adds that in nearly all ages most Christian branches have recognized different dispensations in God’s government. [4] Perusing the theologies and commentaries of both dispensationalists and covenant theologians bears this out.

Bifurcation of Peoples

Poythress gives a brief historical overview of Darby’s and Scofield’s teaching [5] that presented the Church as a heavenly entity and Israel as an earthly one.

Scofield derives from this bifurcation of two peoples of God a bifurcation in hermeneutics. Israel is earthly, the church heavenly. One is natural, the other spiritual. What pertains to Israel is to be interpreted in literalistic fashion. But what pertains to the church need not be so interpreted. And some passages of Scripture—perhaps a good many—are to be interpreted on both levels simultaneously. [6]

Defending Covenant (or Replacement [7]) Theology, he asks why two separate terms, Israel and the church, are used in the New Testament? He answers, “To use ‘Israel’ and ‘the Jews’ (hoi Ioudaioi) most of the time to designate the Jewish people need not entail any denial of the deeper conceptual and theological unity between Old Testament and New Testament phases of existence of one people of God (cf. 1 Peter 2:9–10).” [8]

Poythress seems to imply that dispensationalists’ bifurcation of Israel and the Church not only drives their hermeneutic but also, at least in part, is their hermeneutic. [9] The question, however, is which bifurcation came first: a distinction between Israel and the Church or that between a literal and non-literal hermeneutic? Poythress wants to make it the former. Dispensationalists, on the contrary, argue that the distinction between Israel and the Church is the result of applying a literal hermeneutic.

Poythress sees an example of the dispensationalists’ hermeneutic at work in the way they distinguish the rapture from the Second Coming. Dispensationalists see the rapture as related to the Church and the Second Coming as related to Israel (see “A Test Case,” pages 58–63). The problem, as he states it, is that there is “no consistent terminological difference between the two in the New Testament.” [10] This is true. The following chart summarizes three key terms denoting Christ’s return according to a dispensational point of view:

The Term	Rapture	Second Coming
Parousia: Coming, presence	1 Thessalonians 2:19; 4:15; 5:23	2 Thessalonians 2:8;  Matthew 24:27
Apocalupsis: Unveiling, revelation	1 Corinthians 1:7; 1 Peter 1:7, 13; cf. Romans 8:19	2 Thessalonians 1:7; 1 Peter 4:13; cf. Revelation 1:1.
Epiphaneia: Display of (glory)	2 Timothy 4:8; Titus 2:13	2 Thessalonians 2:8

Dispensationalists do not believe that the terms themselves establish a distinction between the rapture and the Second Coming. Semantic ranges for each of the terms overlap, as is the case with many New Testament terms. [11] Thus, each term’s particular meaning depends on contextual usage; that is, the context establishes whether parousia, for example, denotes more specifically the rapture or the Second Coming in any given instance, as the above chart illustrates. Poythress’ inference that terminology differences are necessary for differentiating events is not helpful because dispensationalists argue exegetically that the contexts in which one finds these terms naturally distinguish between the rapture and the Second Coming. [12]

Theological Eisegesis

Poythress makes a statement that occurs often in theological works and commentaries:

Theological systems, whether dispensationalist, covenantal, Calvinist, Arminian, or even modernist, have a profound influence on the way we approach a given text. World views and social context influence what we notice, what we assume as obvious, and what we emphasize. [13]

One’s theological framework influences one’s thinking about everything in Scripture, if one is consistent. A sound theological system is not a negative; however, feeling free to read it into every passage is a mistake.

All students of Scripture (especially those with a high view of inspiration) should aspire to learn what it says, i.e., what Moses, Isaiah, Paul, John, or Peter meant as they wrote to their addressees. Has the Holy Spirit ceased to illuminate [14] the minds of believers walking by means of the Spirit? Do we not have sufficient exegetical tools to overcome counterproductive influences? It seems that we do (we have Greek and Hebrew exegesis, biblical theology, and finally systematic theology—in that order!), if we would only employ them.

Skewing Exegesis

If we grant this, then what skews the exegetical process for those who have the tools at their disposal? Why is there disagreement over what literal means? What under the hermeneutical landscape leads to misapplication of the exegetical tools? Speaking of the vast differences we find between dispensational and covenant hermeneutics, Clough says:

Neither side chose its hermeneutic in a vacuum any more than an exegete chooses a literal or metaphorical meaning. An integrated network of beliefs about the world and the scriptures lies behind the hermeneutic in general and its specific application. This meta-hermeneutical background underlies the chasm between Dispensational and Covenant Theology. [15]

Poythress likewise sees the importance of the meaning of the term literal to hermeneutics. He says that literal could denote (a) “first-thought meaning,” i.e., the first meaning that occurs to one upon seeing a word in isolation, out-of-context, as opposed to any sort of figurative meaning; [16] (b) “flat interpretation,” i.e., recognizing obvious figures of speech, but neglecting word plays, poetic overtones, irony, etc., [17] or (c) “grammatical-historical interpretation,” i.e., taking passages as whole units and seeking to understand what the author meant in his historical setting by using his grammatical constructions. [18] His implication seems to be that when dispensationalists take exception to his spiritualizing of Old Testament prophecies (applying what is said of Israel to the Church), they are “flat” interpreters.

If one accuses covenant theology of departing from a literal hermeneutic in eschatological literature, Poythress in defense redefines the term literal.

• As regards the nature of Old Testament symbolism, he says that the most “literalistic” reading of eschatological prophecy is not the best.19 If he means by “literalistic” the historical-grammatical approach, does this not redefine the term literal, opening the door to spiritualizing Old Testament prophecies and inviting the dispensationalist’s charge of the same?
• As regards the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament, the question of literalism in interpretation again rises to the surface. Poythress argues, “we should carefully base our interpretation of the Old Testament primarily on this book [i.e., Hebrews].”20 This exactly reverses the process the Bereans used to test Paul’s teaching. It would not have been possible for them to vet Paul’s teaching against the Old Testament if the apostle completely reinterpreted the Old Testament promises to Israel in the way that Poythress does. Classic dispensationalists take exception to this anti-Berean approach, believing instead that one should start with the book of Genesis, asking what God meant by His progressively given revelation at each historical stage and what Abraham and his descendants understood by that revelation. These starting points alone are enough to keep genuine dispensationalists and covenant theologians apart in their interpretations until Christ returns.
• The OT understood the blessing (Gen. 12:3) as extending beyond Israelites. That is under a literal understanding of the OT covenants. Furthermore, the OT spoke of the New Covenant and understood the Mosaic Law as conditional and temporary. Pray tell why Hebrews would in any way require the annulment of the Abrahamic, the Land, and the New covenants. It makes better sense to see Hebrews speaking of the annulment of the Mosaic Law. In light of this, a replacement theology approach to Hebrews is not a faithful treatment of Hebrews, nor is it a faithful approach to the OT. [21]

Poythress is aware of another problem. He points out that critics place a dispensational framework and their own non-dispensational framework side by side and then say, “Let us see how each system works when applied to a particular text.” [22] However, this approach inverts what biblical exegesis and interpretation should be. Rather than seeking to apply one’s “pre-canned” framework to a text, one should ask, “Does this text, in its own historically-grammatically understood context, support the system?” If not, one should change or discard the system.

Looking under the Hermeneutical Floor [23]

Peter says that the Holy Spirit moved holy men of old to speak the word, which has prophetic characteristics (2 Peter 1:20–21). These prophets recorded divine revelation, which became the Old Testament canonical Scripture. The apostles and prophets did the same for the New Testament. Their language (e.g., Greek vocabulary and syntax) is the means by which God communicated written revelation to man. What is the nature of this revelation? It is words in which God as Creator of history has expressed meaning and which man as creature can comprehend, because “it is a public conversation between God and man, not private human mysticism. Neither God nor man evolves, so that meaning can convey across the centuries.” [24]

Now, the total number of words and meanings that exist at any given time comprise a universal lexicon, or universal dictionary. The Old and New Testament vocabulary is a subset of this lexicon. The lexicon as a whole changes with human growth and experience, losing some words, gaining others, and losing and adding definitions to the words it retains. Such change does not occur, however, with the vocabulary of a written communication. This is because the writer captures the words he uses at the moment of writing, recording his message with the meanings those words have at that time. Thus, the time-sensitive definitions of the words in the biblical subset of the universal lexicon are forever frozen; neither jot nor tittle will change. [25] To interpret a historical utterance based on a later lexicon (i.e., to reinterpret the Old Testament promises in New Testament terms) is a flagrant anachronism. [26] An interpreter should read an historical utterance based on the lexicon that obtained at the time the author wrote. One of the central problems in doing so is reconstructing the author’s and readers’ shared lexicon at the time of writing. The best way of going about this is to examine the linguistic context: the other written works of that time and culture.

Covenant theologians, however, emphasize New Testament revelation and from that starting point seek to apply New Testament revelation back into the Old Testament. This is observable in five components of their system: the elect, redemption, faith, the gospel content, and divine blessing. These five elements, according to Covenant theologians, “remain constant throughout history and underlie their hermeneutical methodology.” [27]

Moreover, Covenant Theology tolerates non-literal interpretation for prophecies not involving the gospel core, because the modern universal lexicon,. .. diverges from the ancient scriptural lexicon....[28]

Comparison of the Two Systems

	Covenant Theology	Dispensationalism
The elect	The elect are those saved forever, regardless of tribal origin, gender, time, location, and specific acts of God. The human party in each covenant is part of one homogeneous group: the elect. Since in this view there exists only one people of God, the Church has effectively replaced Israel.	Rather than categorizing all the elect as one homogeneous group, dispensationalism classifies the elect according to the historical context in which a covenant originates. Thus, the term elect has a semantic range that encompasses Israel and the Church as distinct groups. [29] To change the meaning of the contractual terms is tantamount to fraud—an impossibility with God. Further, both soteriological and non-soteriological elements are allowed to stand in all covenants.
Redemption	Christ’s atonement underlies all God’s gracious overtures to man and is not vulnerable to human resistance. Accordingly, it is inconsistent to think that Christ offered the Kingdom to Israel, was rejected and then crucified because of rejection.	Though Christ’s atonement underlies God’s many gracious manifestations to man, from Adam to the end, each historical context and event must be permitted to speak for itself. When viewed contextually and historically, Israel did reject Christ’s atonement. Yet, in the end God will employ this rejection for His glory in the restoration of repentant Israel.
Faith	Faith (subjective) must be present in all aspects of the covenant of grace. There is no such thing as a covenant based on mere physical descent or ceremony.	In both Old and New Testament, where man’s eternal salvation is the subject, faith alone is the subjective means of obtaining eternal life. Where man’s eternal salvation is not in view, dispensationalism guards whatever contractual terms are present, e.g., one being a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Content of Gospel Call	In all ages, the gospel call centers on faith in the Messiah, or Christ, as revealed in the NT. Belief in Christ is read back into OT hortatory passages that say nothing of Him.	In all ages, the content of faith is whatever gospel content has been revealed to man up to that point.
Blessing	Israel, because of disobedience, lost the blessing of the land (literal), or (if land is a metaphor) of the spiritual kingdom of God.	God will grant all His promised blessings in keeping with the historical contractual terms and those terms’ meaning shared by both parties.

The Covenant theologians’ approach is driven by their presupposed Covenant of Grace—a theological induction, not a biblically attested covenant. They reason that all of the elect must be recipients of God’s grace through this covenant, resulting in the existence of one people of God. They believe it is therefore inconsistent to postulate two peoples of God. This conviction prior to the management of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic leads them to take Israel as Israel in the Old Testament but to abandon a normal use of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic in the New Testament, seeing the Church as the recipient of God’s promises to Israel, or as an extension of Israel.

In keeping with covenant theology, Poythress holds that “there can only be one people belonging to God, because there is only one Christ.” [30] He goes on to argue that Israel as God’s people was a preliminary and shadowy form until Christ’s work was complete: “But we cannot think of the Old Testament people of God as a second people of God alongside the New Testament people of God. These are two successive historical phases of the manifestation of the corporate and community implications of Christ’s representative headship.” [31]

Dispensationalists seek to maintain a consistent historical-grammatical hermeneutical meaning. They insist that the contemporary reader must continue to understand Old Testament terms as the Old Testament lexicon defines them in their historical contexts. For example, if Israel meant the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then a consistent and evenhanded interpreter must allow that meaning to stand throughout the whole canon, unless clear historical-grammatical evidence indicates otherwise. The evidence, Dispensationalists argue, does not, but rather reveals two peoples of God. The biblical contractual arrangements, or covenants (Abrahamic, Land [Palestinian], Davidic, and New), must be allowed to stand as established. As Clough has pointed out, “It’s ironic that we dispensationalists take covenant structures more seriously than Covenant theologians!” [32]

These two approaches to the management of hermeneutics must inevitably lead to dramatic differences in eschatology, and they do. While those hermeneutical differences stand, an unbridgeable chasm lies between amillennial and dispensational eschatology.

The Issue of Fulfillment

In the following quotation, Poythress claims that dispensationalists are zealous for exactness. He is right. Most, if not all, would admit that they want to be as precise as possible. After all, it is God’s word.

Dispensationalists have been among those most zealous to defend the idea that many promises of God are unconditional, which guarantees their fulfillment in exactly the form that they are uttered. The desire for unconditionality may be one subtle factor behind the attractiveness of the ideal of scientifically precise language. In everyday language of the home or the workplace, a statement of a promise may include implicit qualifications or conditions. For instance, “I will be there at five o’clock” often may be said with the implicit understanding, “If no emergencies prevent me,” or “If you do not cancel the engagement.” On the other hand, in the scientific sphere we expect that qualifications or conditions will be spelled out. To assimilate the Bible to scientific language gives greater weight to the claim that there are many unconditional promises. [33]

Poythress correctly declines to place biblical covenants in the sphere of “scientific” precision, but he fails to mention that precise language is not limited to the scientific sphere. The language of contract is equally precise, and for the same reasons: all parties must understand the statements in the same way. Loosening the precision of contract language to make it equivalent to the casual “I will be there at five o’clock, if possible” makes it impossible to do business. A mortgage contract that stipulates 360 payments of $1000 each does not imply that 342 payments of about $700 each will be acceptable if emergencies arise. Scientific precision may be a modern innovation, but contractual precision is as old as commerce itself, and it certainly applies to ancient covenants.

Poythress speaks of the dispensationalists’ “desire for unconditionality,” implying that this “desire” is the motivating cause of their attraction to “scientifically precise language.” A fair reading of Clough’s article [34] reveals a different motivation. Men like Darby and Scofield, who both studied law, came to an understanding of the nature of biblical covenants, or contracts. Two factors stand out: (1) we must preserve contract terminology unchanged for the life of the contract, from origin to fulfillment, and (2) “only literal meanings can be verified or falsified against the enforcement criteria or standards.” [35] The dispensationalists’ desire for unconditionality is the result of rediscovering the nature of a contract-covenant.

Contracts necessarily bind behavior to verification standards. That’s why they exist. And in defense of this view, remember when. .. Unger pointed out that most of the ancient verbal clay records were business accounting, not religious texts? They had to do accounting like we do and track legally-defined behaviors. Maybe they had. .. accountants who would have been glad to adopt Bock / Poythress hermeneutics but I imagine they weren’t the acceptable standard! [36]

Further, Poythress seems uncomfortable with the notion of a consistent historical-grammatical hermeneutic, which one may infer from his discussion of figurative resurrections in the Old Testament, such as his following:

• Noah’s salvation through the Flood (the water being a symbol of death; cf. Jonah 2:2–6)
• Isaac’s salvation from death by the substitute of a ram
• Moses’ salvation as an infant from the water
• Israel’s salvation at the Passover and at the Red Sea
• Restoration from Babylon as a kind of preliminary “resurrection” of Israel from the dead (Ezekiel 37)
• Elijah’s raising of a dead boy

With regard to these Old Testament happenings, Poythress comments, “All these show some kind of continuity with the great act of redemption, the resurrection of Christ. But they also show discontinuity. Most of them are somehow figurative or shadowy.” [37]

In addition, he says, before the Incarnation “redemption must of necessity partake of a partial, shadowy, ‘inadequate’ character, because it must point forward rather than locating any ultimate sufficiency in itself.” [38] In keeping with the primacy of their covenant of grace, covenant theologians interpret these Old Testament examples soteriologically.

If one permits historical contexts to speak for themselves, a different interpretation emerges. In the cases of Noah and Isaac, the salvation/deliverance is not soteriological but experiential, i.e., God rescued those already His own from a temporal disaster. Moses’ deliverance as an infant, even by covenant standards, which require the subjective act of faith, could not have been soteriological. The restorations of Israel from Egypt and then Babylon are likewise figures or illustrations of God delivering those already His own (His own special treasure, Exodus 19:5) from divine discipline into a place of temporal blessing. These are examples of Christian experience, not of unbelievers receiving eternal life. To draw soteriological/Christological parallels in these cases requires that a student bring some interpretive tool other than a grammatical-historical hermeneutic to bear on the text. The covenant theologian is willing to do this; the dispensationalist is not.

Another subject where the abyss between covenant theology and dispensationalism readily appears is the millennium. Poythress says:

Moreover, all the promises are relevant to the church; all apply to us in some fashion, directly and indirectly. But not all are fulfilled in the church as such. Some are not at present fulfilled at all in the church. Some are only partially fulfilled in the church. In studying some prophecies we come to think that their full realization is still future. [39]

Circumventing the canonical lexicon, Poythress transfers to the church promises made to the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—a clear example of replacement theology at work.

He grants that there are literal fulfillments in the New Testament yet argues that the following passages are cases of non-literal fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies (Luke 3:5; Acts 2:17–21; Galatians 3:29; Hebrews 8:8–12). [40] Dispensationalists interpret these passages differently. [41] Poythress comments as follows:

The more basic issues concern what counts as evidence for fulfillment, and how that fulfillment is itself to be understood. These prior issues largely determine how the dispensationalists or their critics undertake to explain the text and integrate it with their whole system. [42]

Dispensationalists recognize, as does Poythress, that the term fulfill in the New Testament has a semantic range. The following are examples of this range:

1. An Old Testament passage may have a literal fulfillment. In this case, details of the prophecy happen as stated.

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me
The One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old,
From everlasting. (Micah 5:2, later quoted by Matthew 2:6) [43]

Bethlehem was an actual city in Micah’s day and in that city the Messiah was born—a literal fulfillment.

2. A passage may be “fulfilled” that was not a prophecy to begin with.

Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.”
(Matthew 2:17–18, quoting Jeremiah 31:15).

In the broader context, Jeremiah foresees Israel’s millennial conditions, predicting that God will restore Israel from her years of desolation, even relieving parents of the suffering they have endured because of their children’s suffering. Jeremiah’s statement about Ramah and its mothers mourning is not a prediction at all, but something that was happening at the time this oracle came to Jeremiah. Matthew quotes this particular statement as being “fulfilled” in Jesus’ day because the genocide of Herod the Great follows the pattern of the event in Jeremiah’s day: Israel’s mothers weep for children who will not return to them. In this case, fulfillment is not a matter of a prediction coming true, but a new event following the pattern laid down by an old one.

Accordingly, the New Testament utilizes a range of meanings for fulfill. Since the terminology of a contractual agreement determines what constitutes compliance with it, it is important to honor the biblical lexicon existing at the time covenants were instituted. [44]

From this standpoint alterations of lexical meanings are akin to contract fraud. After a tornado destroyed Mr. Smith’s house, imagine him discovering that his homeowner’s [insurance] policy would not reimburse him, because house really means family, not his dwelling-place. [45]

In back-to-back sections titled “Hedging on Fulfillment” and “Dispensationalist Harmonization,” Poythress objects to the dispensationalists’ understanding of prophetic fulfillment. [46] He believes they take the fulfillment of prophecies sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, sometimes applicationally, and sometimes spiritually. He apparently sees their approach as an arbitrary procedure by which interpreters suppress evidence to maintain a “level of literal fulfillment to Israel.” [47] Seeking to preserve literal fulfillment to Israel, not surprisingly, is important to dispensationalists because of the contractual nature of a covenant, as developed earlier.

Contrary to how some non-dispensationalists view dispensationalists’ interpretation of prophecy, the notion of partial and typical fulfillment has its place. Where there is partial or typical fulfillment, however, it does “not replace a final fulfillment without forcing a breach of contract,” [48] because an immutable God cannot lie.

Typical or analogical fulfillment is allowed only as a revelation by metaphor, not by contractual performance. Revelation by metaphor is a corollary of creation. God created a harmonious universe with a harmonious history, repeating design features on different scales both in size and in time. For example, Scripture cites the wolf living in peace with the lamb (ecological tranquillity) as analogous to peaceful human relations (social tranquillity). However, without a catastrophic geophysical and biological transformation of the world resulting in such ecological tranquillity, the metaphor lacks foundation. There would be no typical or analogical fulfillment of the kingdom promises of the Old Testament covenants. During inductive study, therefore, a Dispensationalist applies a rigid standard of coherence to distinguish a semantic range for the word fulfill. From his perspective taking all New Testament uses of fulfillment terminology in the same semantic sense of covenant fulfillment, while not permitting analogical fulfillment, is lexically incoherent with the Old Testament. [49]

Thus, the term fulfill in the New Testament may refer to a typical or analogical fulfillment of an Old Testament passage, or it may refer to God performing in time, space, and history what He had previously promised to do. These are two separate meanings for fulfill, and as always, context (Old and New Testament) will determine which applies in a given instance. [50]

A Test Case: Rapture, Second Coming, or Both (1 Corinthians 15:51-52)?

Prelude

Poythress puts forth the notion that the pre-tribulational last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:51–53) is problematic for dispensationalists because seven years later another trumpet sounds at Christ’s second coming (Matthew 24:31), presenting a reconciliation issue. [51]

The hermeneutical question is, what is the best way to understand 1 Corinthians 15:51–52? Is it best to be literal in the sense of following the grammatical-historical exegetical method or to adhere to the “first-thought meaning” of the term last? Poythress opts for the latter, setting aside the grammatical-historical-contextual approach and thus making the rapture and Second Coming simultaneous. [52] He recognizes that Dwight Pentecost (Things to Come) is right when he says that we do not have to understand last in an absolute way. [53] Poythress argues, however, that for last not to be absolute, it would need a qualifying clause of some kind, which he says it does not have in 1 Corinthians 15. Thus, he claims, Pentecost has only the church-Israel distinction to fall back on for support. Poythress then asks, “But where does 1 Corinthians say or hint that the ‘lastness’ is to be understood as confined to the concerns of the church?” [54] This is not only a fair question, but a crucial one.

In order to answer that question, three things are necessary. First, one must have an understanding of the nature and origins of the church. Second, one must know to whom the book of 1 Corinthians is addressed. Lastly, one must understand the role of the word mystery in 1 Corinthians 15:51.

The Nature and Origin of the Church

To begin an answer, it is necessary to understand just what the church is, and how a person enters it. Paul says, By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:13). Thus, entry into the body of Christ is through the baptism of the Spirit. Body of Christ and church are equivalent terms, as demonstrated by several references in Paul’s writings:

• And He [Christ] is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:18)
• I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church. (Colossians 1:24)
• And He [the Father] put all things under His [the Son’s] feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22–23)

One enters the body of Christ, that is, the church, by being baptized into it by the Holy Spirit. To determine when the church began, one must search the Scriptures to see when this baptizing ministry began. On the day of His ascension, Jesus tells His disciples that it has not yet begun:

John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized by the Holy Spirit not many days from now. (Acts 1:5)

Jesus’ statement does not indicate when this baptism will start. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 points to the Day of Pentecost as the day when the Spirit began baptizing. If that is not clear, Luke leaves no doubt in chapter 11, where Peter reports to the Jerusalem church about the conversion of the Gentile centurion Cornelius and his household:

As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us at the beginning. Then I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 11:15–16)

First, Peter equates what happened to Cornelius with what happened to the disciples in the beginning. That is, the Holy Spirit fell upon all of them: (a) the Jews at the beginning, and (b) Cornelius and his household (Gentiles) most recently. After this a rehearsal of historical facts, Peter also provides the biblical explanation, quoting the Lord: You shall be baptized by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit falling on Cornelius and his family was the baptism by the Spirit. It also happened at the beginning, in Acts 2, on the Day of Pentecost, and that is the day when the Holy Spirit began His baptism ministry.

If the means of entry into the church is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and if that means of entry was not available until Pentecost, then it follows that no one entered the church until Pentecost. Accordingly, the church is composed of all believers from Pentecost to the present day. Believing Israel of the Old Testament is necessarily excluded from the church, for the baptism of the Spirit of God had not yet begun.

The Recipients of 1 Corinthians

It is also necessary to understand to whom Paul addresses the epistle of 1 Corinthians. A number of clues identify his addressees:

• To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints (1:2).
• Paul calls them brethren (1:10, 26; 2:1; 3:1; 4:6; 7:24, 29; 10:1; 11:1; 12:1; 14:6, 20, 26, 39; 15:1, 50; 16:15), my brethren (1:11; 11:33), beloved children (whom Paul begot through the gospel) (4:14–15), my beloved (10:14), and beloved brethren (15:58). In their midst are weaker brethren for whom Christ died and against whom they may sin (8:11–12). As genuine Christians, they are the seal of Paul’s apostleship in the Lord (9:2). They are contrasted with those who do not believe (10:27), as is their present state with the time when they were Gentiles [i.e., nonbelievers], carried away to these dumb idols (12:3). Paul also describes the Corinthians as having received his gospel, standing in it, and being saved by it (15:1–2).
• By God’s working, they are in Christ Jesus, who became for [them] wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1:30).
• They collectively are the temple of God (3:16–17) and each believer’s body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (6:19).
• Regardless of past sinful lifestyles, they are now washed. .. sanctified. .. justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God (6:11).
• They belong to Christ (3:23); their bodies are members of Christ (6:15); they are not their own, for [they] were bought with a price (6:19–20; cf. 7:23).
• In addition, the apostle says, By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit (12:13), and you are the body of Christ (12:27). (emphasis added)

The evidence is overwhelming that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to believers, not to unbelievers or a mixed group. The book aims at the experiential (progressive) sanctification of church members stumbling in their Christian living. Corinth is legendary for its disobedience (e.g., 3:1–4), and even denial of the resurrection of the dead (15:12). Since the addressees of the book are believers after Pentecost, they are all members of the church.

Poythress argues that understanding the last trumpet in anything other than an absolute sense requires qualifying material proving that this trumpet has to do with the church. Poythress is looking for a phrase or a clause in the verse itself, and so he misses the first line of evidence: Paul wrote the whole book to the church.

The Use of Mystery in 1 Corinthians 15:51

In addition to addressing the whole book to the church, Paul leaves a smaller clue in the immediate context, which Poythress also misses.

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51–52)

The New Testament consistently uses mystery [55] to refer to a truth that was unknown in Old Testament times but is revealed to church-age saints: revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the world began but now has been made manifest (Romans 16:25–26). Accordingly, Paul’s choice of this term denotes that what he is about to say refers to the saints who compose the body of Christ, the church.

The pronoun we, denoting Paul and the recipients, occurs three times. Earlier it was established that the letter’s recipients are Spirit-baptized and therefore part of the body of Christ, a corporate entity identified as one new man (Ephesians 2:15) and brought into existence on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2). First Thessalonians 4:13–5:11 adds that the Lord will complete this entity’s construction at the rapture, at which time it will obtain salvation (5:9). God delivers the church from the day of the Lord (5:2), elsewhere referred to as Daniel’s Seventieth Week, or more popularly the Tribulation—a seven-year period during which the Lord unleashes wrath and judgment on mankind. The church’s deliverance is two-fold: from wrath (5:9), [56] but also unto life together with him (5:10). This places the church’s last trumpet and deliverance seven years before the Second Coming with its trumpet.

First Corinthians in its totality addresses members of the body of Christ, the church. The content of chapter 15 is no different, keeping the church and its resurrection in view. Contextually, no other entity (e.g., those before Abraham, during Israel’s pre-Cross history, or those after the church’s resurrection) is in view. The last trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15, then, is the church’s last trumpet, and relates to its departure into glory.

In light of the above, it is fair to say that dispensationalists have adhered to a historical-grammatical hermeneutic, leading to the conclusion that the last trumpet of 1 Corinthians 15 is the last trumpet of the Church Dispensation.

With regard to the last trumpet. When I was in high school, some students got out after 6th period. Others got out after 7th. Every student was allowed to leave after his/her “last bell.” If someone said, “I can’t wait until the last bell,” it does not necessarily refer to the bell at the end of the 7th period. After all, if someone has been home for an hour before the 7th period bell went off, then the last bell heard by that person was the one ending the 6th period. Therefore, I totally reject Poythress’ suggestion that it must have an adjectival qualifier for us to differentiate the trumpets. I take it that last trumpet refers to the last one heard by someone, not necessarily the last one played in God’s program. [57]

Conclusion

A dispensational understanding of terms and events (e.g., the rapture and the Second Coming) is contextually responsive. Consistent literal interpretation applies to eschatological literature. Each term has a semantic range, and the context is the basis for isolating a term’s correct meaning within that range. Furthermore, each term should be interpreted in keeping with the lexicon that existed at the time of writing.

The terms of God’s covenants with Israel are not changeable. That is, one may not shape or reshape covenantal terms and their meanings in keeping with later hermeneutical or theological models. God’s Old Testament covenants are contractual in nature, requiring that if Israel meant the physical descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, then Israel must consistently mean this throughout Scripture. It is inappropriate to change the terms of a contract after the fact; thus, the biblical contractual arrangements, or covenants, must be allowed to stand as established. Not to do so is to play fast-and-loose with the biblical lexicon. And what can be said about the veracity and immutability of God if He alters covenantal terms? As quoted earlier, “It’s ironic that we dispensationalists take covenant structures more seriously than Covenant theologians!” [58]

Notes

1. Vern S. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1994).
2. Charles A. Clough, “A Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison of Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism,” CTS Journal 7 (April-June 2001), 59–80.
3. Because of Clough’s use of mathematical logic, it is recommended that one read his entire article. For greatest profit, those not familiar with such logic should keep a running list of symbols and their meanings to follow the article.
4. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 9.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. Ibid., 24.
7. Replacement theology holds that the Church has become the sole recipient of the covenants God made with Israel, i.e., the Church replaced national Israel.
8. Poythress, 45.
9. Ibid., 57, says, “Contemporary dispensationalists of course have attempted to refine grammatical-historical interpretation within their system. But the attempts at such interpretation within classic dispensationalism are often still too dominated by the presupposition and mind-set of the overall system, a system that remains operative when dispensationalists come to examine particular texts.” A dispensationalist would counter that the model Poythress advances remains dominated by a conjectured covenant of works.
10. Ibid., 56.
11. For example, both John 3:16 and Acts 27:31 use sz, but that hardly means that both passages describe the same kind of salvation.
12. Dr. John Niemelä, Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Chafer Theological Seminary, in personal e-mail correspondence says, “With regard to Poythress trying to say that the overlap of terminology between the Second Advent and Rapture precludes differentiating them, that is nonsense. We recognize a contextual difference between temptation and testing, even though the same Greek word is used. We also recognize a historic difference between Judean and Jew, even though the same Greek word is used.”
13. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 58.
14. Illumination is the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit that enlightens one’s understanding of existing biblical revelation.
15. Clough, “Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison,” 59. He defines “meta-hermeneutic” as “the set of metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical beliefs which one’s hermeneutical stance inextricably involves” (ibid., n. 2).
16. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 82–83.
17. Ibid., 83-84.
18. Ibid., 84-85.
19. Ibid., 69; he seeks to support this contention in chapters 8-11.
20. Ibid., 69-70; emphasis his.
21. Personal e-mail correspondence from John Niemelä.
22. Poythress, 68.
23. That which follows gleans much information from Clough’s important work.
24. Clough, “Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison,” 61.
25. Robert L. Thomas, “The Hermeneutics of Progressive Dispensationism,” MSJ 6 (Spring 1995), 87–88, points out that progressive dispensationalists follow a hermeneutic that is in stark contrast to that embraced by genuine dispensationalists. He says, “Bock,. .. advocates a multilayered reading of the text which results in a ‘complementary’ reading (or meaning) that adds to the original meaning determined by the text’s original setting. The ‘complementary’ perspective views the text from the standpoint of later events, not the events connected with the text’s origin. He proposes a third layer of reading also, that of the entire biblical canon. In essence, he sees three possible interpretations of a single text, only one of which pertains to the text’s original historical setting. He refers to his method as a historical-grammatical-literary reading of the text. He notes that ‘such a hermeneutic produces layers of sense and specificity for a text, as the interpreter moves from considering the near context to more distant ones.’ “By thus ignoring the way the original historical setting ‘freezes’ the meaning of a text, Bock concludes that the meaning of any given passage is not static, but dynamic. It is ever changing through the addition of new meanings.. . .“For PD [Progressive Dispensationalist] hermeneutics, ‘historical’ has apparently come to incorporate not just the situation of the original text, but also the ongoing conditions throughout the history of the interpretation of that text. According to traditional hermeneutical principles, such a ‘bending’ is impossible because the historical dimension fixes the meaning of a given passage and does not allow it to keep gaining new senses as it comes into new settings.”
26. Umberto Eco, “Between Author and Text,” in Interpretation and Overinterpretation, ed. Stephan Collini (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 68, recounts a telling example: “I remember that in 1985, during a debate at Northwestern University I said to Hartman that he was a ‘moderate’ deconstructionist because he refrained from reading the line ‘A poet could not but be gay’ as a contemporary reader would do if the line were found in Playboy. In other words, a sensitive and responsible reader is not obliged to speculate about what happened in the head of Wordsworth when writing that verse, but has the duty to take into account the state of the lexical system at the time of Wordsworth. At that time ‘gay’ had no sexual connotation, and to acknowledge this point means to interact with a cultural and social treasury.”
27. Clough, “Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison,” 67. In personal conversation, Dr. Steve Lewis, president of Rocky Mountain Bible College and Seminary, has pointed out that covenant theologians expose their inconsistent application of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic by failing to apply the same non-literal interpretive approach to Christ’s first coming as they do to the second.
28. Ibid., 68.
29. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, Israelology (Tustin, CA: Ariel Ministries, 1993), 563, says, “Not bound to a covenant of grace, but only bound to the text of Scripture, Dispensationalism allows the Church to be the Church, but Israel is allowed to be Israel.”
30. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 43.
31. Ibid. The way Poythress frames this simple statement exposes his assumption of the primacy of the New Testament. Historically speaking, Israel is not the “second” people of God but the first. Poythress argues that Romans 5:12-21 “excludes in principle the idea of two parallel peoples of God, because the corporate unity of the people of God derives from their common representative Head.” The fact that Christ is the king of Israel (although not yet enthroned) as well as the Head of the church does not prove that the two are the same entity. For example, my two vocational roles (President of Chafer Theological Seminary and Pastor of Grace Chapel) do not create an equation between CTS and Grace Chapel.
32. Charles A. Clough, personal e-mail correspondence.
33. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists,61–62.
34. See Clough, “Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison,” 76–79.
35. Ibid., 76.
36. Clough, personal e-mail correspondence.
37. Poythress,Understanding Dispensationalists, 41.
38. Ibid., 42.
39. Ibid., 47.
40. Ibid., 53.
41. Fruchtenbaum, Israelology, 841–45, delineates four ways the New Testament uses the Old Testament: (1) literal prophecy plus literal fulfillment, (2) literal plus typical, (3) literal plus application, and (4) summation. He recaps: “Every New Testament quotation of the Old will fit into one of these four categories. The procedure is not simply ‘to interpret the Old by the New’ as Covenant Theology insists. The procedure is first to see what the original quotation means in its own context. Once that is determined, then it can also be determined in just which of the four categories the quotation belongs. There is no need to conclude that the New Testament changes or reinterprets the Old Testament” (ibid., 845).
42. Poythress, Understanding Dispensationalists, 55.
43. Scriptural quotations are from the New King James Version (Nashville: Nelson, 1982).
44. Clough, “Meta-Hermeneutical Comparison,” 77.
45. Ibid., 78.
46. Ibid., 52-57.
47. Ibid., 55.
48. Ibid., 78.
49. Ibid.
50. The Covenant hermeneutic conflates these two different definitions. Dispensationalists, on the other hand, seek to avoid that error.
51. Poythress, 71.
52. Ibid., 73.
53. Ibid., 74.
54. Ibid.
55. The term mystery is used 27 times in the New Testament, 20 of them by Paul. Contextual studies reveal that mystery is a multi-faceted term, not a technical term with one meaning only.
56. Revelation 3:10 adds κὰγῶ σε τηρῃσω ἐκ της ῶρὰ τους πειρασμους, i.e., I also will keep you from the hour of trial. See John H. Niemelä, “For You Have Kept My Word: The Grammar of Revelation 3:10, ” CTS Journal 6 (January-March, 2000): 14-38.
57. Niemelä, personal e-mail correspondence.
58. Charles A. Clough, personal e-mail correspondence.